She is the former associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Wyoming, where she also was professor of communication and journalism. Earlier she was the director of the African American and Diaspora Studies program at the University of Wyoming.

The University of California has admitted 60,089 in-state students to its nine undergraduate campuses for the class entering in the fall of 2013. Of the total admits, 2,518 students, or 4.2 percent, are African Americans, down from 4.4 percent a year ago.

Emmy Award-winning journalist Soledad O’Brien was named a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she will explore a wide variety of topics related to public education in America.

The study of more than 2 million home sales from 1990 to 2008 in four major metropolitan areas studied prices by Blacks and Whites of comparable homes in the same neighborhoods. Blacks, on average, paid 3.5 percent more.

Dr. Perkins was professor emeritus of the humanities at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He served as assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs, executive assistant to the chancellor, and special assistant to the chancellor at the university.

Leon Haley Jr., associate professor of emergency medicine, was named to an advisory council of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Michael Leo Owens, associate professor of political science, was chosen as chair of the governing board of the Urban Affairs Association.

Under the agreement students from Nigeria will be able to study at home for two years and then complete their degree at a campus of the Texas Tech system. The plan is for 250 Nigerian students to study on Texas Tech campuses each academic year.

A team from North Carolina A&T State University took the $100,000 grand prize for developing a bio-based adhesive from swine manure for potential use as a substitute for petroleum-based asphalt binder.

Under the agreement the two universities will participate in faculty and student exchanges. Graduates of Harris-Stowe State University will be eligible for in-state tuition rate if they are accepted into graduate programs at Southern Illinois University.

This October, Ngugi wa Thiong’o will be presented with the University of California Irvine Medal for his service to the university. Velma McBride Murry of Vanderbilt University was honored by the Society for Research in Child Development.

The department of English and foreign languages has opened up two new facilities to help students with their communications skills. The Enhancement Writing Laboratory and the English Instructional Computer Classroom are available for students majoring in any discipline.

Paquita Davis-Friday was named executive director of graduate programs at the business school of Baruch College in New York. Martin McCrory was named associate vice president and vice provost at Indiana University in Bloomington and Anthony Troy Adams was named interim dean at Alabama State University.

Two Virginia State University students, participating in an initiation rite for a group not affiliated with the university, were swept away by currents in the Appomattox River. Late Monday, police found the body of the one of the men. Another body believed to be the second student was found on Wednesday.

An online petition calls on the University of California to establish an institute of sports business to honor the legacy of Jackie Robinson. The petition also seeks to rename a portion of a street adjacent to the UCLA campus, Jackie Robinson Way.

Under the new “Take 2 Through College” initiative, Regent University in Virginia Beach will partner with churches and community groups to mentor and sponsor Black and Latino students. Currently, African Americans make up about one quarter of the undergraduate student body.

In a resolution passed by a vote of 28-9, the faculty senate at the University of Michigan called on the administration to focus on increasing the diversity of the student body. Today, Blacks make up 5 percent of the student body, compared to 8.8 percent in 2001.

The conventional wisdom is that African Americans have major trust issues with the American medical establishment due to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the huge racial gap in medical professionals. But new research suggests this is not the case.

In 1998 the Black student graduation rate at Howard University in Washington, D.C., was 47 percent. Today, the latest graduation rate figures shows that 64 percent of entering students at Howard earn their degree within six years. This is an impressive 17 percentage point gain.

Williams is a retired vice admiral of the U.S. Navy where he was a nuclear submarine commander. The former associate deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Emergy will oversee military and veterans initiatives at George Washington University in the nation’s capital.

Dr. Wright joined Grambling State University in Louisiana in 2009 as dean of the College of Business. Previously, he was chair of the department of accounting and finance and vice president of business and finance at Virginia State University.

Dawne Mouzon, an assistant professor at Rutgers University, has conducted research which disputes the commonly held belief that the lower level of mental health problems among African Americans is the result of stronger family and church ties.

American Baptist College in Nashville has applied for designation and been accepted by the U.S. Department of education as a historically Black college and university. It is now the 106th institution of higher education to hold the label as an HBCU.

Research by Angela Lewis, an associate professor of government at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, finds that one third of African Americans view themselves as conservative but their rightward leanings reflect moral and religious values and not the politics of the Republican Party.